The (non)idiot’s guide to energy

We all know what a carbon footprint is. But for those
ready to go beyond Global Warming 101, energy specialist Carol Sue
Tombari has condensed our national conversation about energy
decisions into a mercifully compact and readable book called
Power of the People: America's New Electricity
Choices. Tombari, the manager of stakeholder relations at
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., writes
from what might be called the Amory Lovins school: She extols the
easy gains of energy efficiencies and the strong potential of
alternative energy sources.

Buildings can already be
designed and constructed with potential energy efficiencies of 60
percent, she notes, and solar power is likely to become cheaper
than coal- or gas-fired in the near to mid-term. Once transmission
lines are built, wind-generated electricity from remote locations
can provide more power to the cities.

So what's holding
us back? We don't act because we're not charged the full cost of
burning fossil fuels, what economists call the "externalities."
Those greenhouse gases and other costs to our environment need to
be taken fully into account. The marketplace is imperfect, Tombari
says, hindered by government regulations that tilt the playing
field toward carbon sources. "Anyone who tells you there's a free
market of energy is either fibbing or has been duped by the
self-serving babble of the entrenched energy industries that avoid
competition by barring others from market entry," she writes.

She saves her tartest observations for the electrical
utilities. Their sheer size - the largest industry in the United
States - and technological complexity have made them opaque to
normal scrutiny. She calls upon government regulators to induce a
broad change. Because utilities' earnings are based on the sale of
electricity, they constantly seek to ramp up their generation of
electricity - and burn yet more coal and gas. Instead, utility
profits should be linked to the delivery of energy services. If
it's 100 degrees in the shade, we want to be cooled, and most
consumers don't really care if that's accomplished by running an
electric-powered air conditioner or by tapping the earth's constant
56-degree temperature.

Tombari's tone is hopeful but also
slightly angry in her call for "urgent evolution." If we have no
silver bullets in our energy arsenal, she says, we have plenty of
silver, maybe even platinum, buckshot. What are we waiting
for?